It has been reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that in 1985 children playing with cigarette lighters were blamed for 7800 fires resulting in 120 deaths, 860 injuries and $60.5 million in property damage, and that 96 per cent of lighters involved in accidents or fires were disposable butane models.
Applicant, in his continuous quest to invent child resistant products, such as medicine bottle caps and closures for pails or drums containing hazardous material, has now devised a child resistant cigarette lighter in response to the above-noted Consumer Product Safety Commission report.
Portable, disposable butane lighters have been provided with security devices to provide presale tamper protection, whereby the purchaser of the lighter is assured that the lighter has not been previously used. Such lighters are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,938,943 dated Feb. 17, 1976; 4,028,043 dated June 7, 1977; and 4,049,370 dated Sept. 20, 1977. In these lighters, the security devices are permanently removed from the lighters prior to the first use so that the lighter is freely actuated in subsequent uses. In other words, the security device is not replaced on the lighter once it has been removed.
After considerable research and experimentation, the child resistant cigarette lighter of the present invention has been devised which includes a slidable stop member mounted on a butane lighter and adapted to releasably engage the gas valve actuating lever. The construction and arrangement of the lighter of the present invention is such that an adult can easily manipulate the stop member and gas valve actuating lever while igniting the lighter, while such manipulation would be beyond the dexterity of a child, thereby rendering the lighter child resistant.
The child resistant lighter of the present invention comprises, essentially, a spring biased stop member slidably mounted on the top portion of a conventional portable, disposable butane cigarette lighter. The stop member is biased in a direction to place an end portion thereof underneath the lighter's gas valve actuating lever, to thereby prevent movement of the lever in a direction to open the gas valve. To actuate the lever, it is first necessary to push the stop member in a direction opposite to the biasing force of the spring, to thereby slide the end portion outwardly from underneath the lever.